


The Circle is Quiet at Midnight

by WardenCommanderCousland



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cullen Smut, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 15:26:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardenCommanderCousland/pseuds/WardenCommanderCousland
Summary: Cullen finds Solana Amell in the Circle library after curfew.*some DAO spoilers*





	The Circle is Quiet at Midnight

The Circle is quiet at midnight. The deep, comfortable quiet when everyone is sound asleep, except for the faint clink of pacing templars’ armor. They’re never fully suited late at night, usually just gauntlets and greaves, enough to backhand a rebellious mage.

I never considered myself a rebel. I just preferred the quiet of the library at night. It was time to study, read deeper into the pages I merely skimmed in my lessons. Or, on nights when I wanted to probe the magics in my mind instead of my hands, select one of the more lurid novels tucked away in the fiction section. It is here that I’ve found myself on this night, refusing a tell-tale candle in favor of the glow through a window.

“It’s past curfew.” Cullen presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, blinking steadily against the moonlight, his thumbs brushing the tight curls snaking in front of his ears. He never does well on the night watches, prefers the early mornings. Just another way we are complete opposites. Still, he is always the one who comes to tell me off, before another templar can do the same.

No one ever speaks of it out loud. It’s just known and patiently ignored. The Grand Enchanter has warned me away from him more than once, and the Knight-Commander has told him the same. Whispers float through the halls, that he has a crush on me. I’ve known it for months, ever since he came to Kinloch Hold. The slight brushes of his hand against my own. The way his voice drops to a near whisper whenever I come near. How his eyes follow me, not like the rest of the apprentices. Something stronger, a longing.

And in these quiet nights, I know he hasn’t come to escort me back to my room. He’s clad only in a rough-woven shirt and trousers, plain even for those raised to be the Chantry’s staunch defenders. Cullen is a farm boy, through and through.

I mark my page with a scrap of silk and slide from my perch on the windowsill. The stone floor feels cold on my feet, but it’s comforting. I cross the space between us in an instant, as soundless as I am fast. Cullen’s face may be stern, but his eyes betray his mouth’s warning. “You should be in bed, Apprentice Amell.”

I am before him and wrap my arms across his shoulders, tracing a finger down the bones that line his neck. I whisper in his ear, asking me if he’s going to take me there. I have never been this bold. He reaches up and pulls my hands free. “We can’t,” he says quietly. “Someone will hear.”

His grasp on me is firm but forgiving and I move my hands to his face, rough stubble lining his jaw. I pull him close to me and kiss him the way I’ve only ever read about. Long and slow and deep and hungry. I may die in my Harrowing, a day that draws ever near, and I don’t want to go having never known a man. Known this specific man.

Cullen’s hands fall from my wrists and they are everywhere, pulling me so close that I could bleed into him, holding me tight between my shoulder blades and in the curve at the base of my spine. My own hair falls loose from the tight bun I prefer, a fire-red curtain around our faces, concealing our breathless kisses.

I step backwards and Cullen follows, a cautious dance that draws us back to the window, the hold’s rough stone walls pressing into my back. I drop my hands to his waist, tugging his shirt away to reveal the soft, pale skin underneath. He is warm and smooth, fine hairs trailing below the band of his pants, leading to the need that is growing ever urgent. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispers.

“And yet we are,” I say. His hands slide back to my front, pushing my robes ever upwards. He steps back in surprise when he reveals my secret: that I have worn nothing underneath my apprentice robes for days, waiting for this moment. In the dim moonlight I can see what he is afraid to say. He wants me.

I pull him back, untying the string holding up his trousers with a deftness that should surprise me, but doesn’t. The fabric slides away, releasing what he has been trying so hard to hide. And it is _so hard_. He’s pushing my back further up against the wall, high enough for me to wrap my legs around his waist and he’s inside me. Pressing his face into my collarbone, Cullen repeats, “We shouldn’t be doing this. Someone will catch us.”

“Then you’d better hurry up,” I pant. The feel of him inside me is unreal, rigid yet warm. I can feel every ridge on his member as he withdraws and thrusts again, the edge from where they cut him as a babe, the vein traveling along its middle, the crease where it meets his groin pressed up against me. I’ve been wanting this for months and we are here, twisted around each other, thrusting, grabbing, kissing desperately.

Cullen shivers and withdraws, panting, spent. He looks down at himself as he falls to his knees, then back at me in horror. I expected there to be some blood, had heard the older mages in my dormitory recall it from their first couplings, but he is covered. He looks up at me in horror, thick, black blood covering his legs and now his hands. “What are you?” he hisses.

I look down at my own hands, my legs still laid bare from my pushed-up robe. They have the wrinkled gray of death. I catch my reflection in the window, hair gone, eyes sunken and black, teeth at razor points. I let out an ear-piercing shriek. The shriek I hear every night when I dream of other things, of hordes underground, of a dragon leading them ever forward towards the surface.

My eyes fly open. I am covered in cold sweat and throw aside my soaked blanket. It falls on Leliana, who grunts and rolls away without waking. We cannot approach Denerim fast enough; the Archdemon is always three steps ahead. My heart has been cold since we left the Circle, refusing Cullen’s request to purge the remaining mages. His stony stare, his cries that I’ve doomed everyone. Eyes that no longer saw me, only a monster.

And maybe it’s true, that I’ve become a monster. The blight courses through my veins, killing me faster than my magic will. The whispers I hear now are in tongues I can’t understand, a song that pulls me closer to an evil greater than those I faced in the Fade. An evil I cannot deny. The broodmother shows me what the future holds for me. Riordan may have promised to take the final blow against the Archdemon, but I will challenge him for it. I can no longer face the world as I am, and I will accept death’s plunge into the Fade for eternity. ~~~~

And in my twisted tainted heart, I hope that Cullen will meet me there, his eyes longing for me once again.


End file.
